Set in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, a time of significant political upheaval and military conflict, the game has no shortage of dynamic characters and intense confrontations to choose from. It also, however, places itself among stiffer competition, as the game has to stack up against plenty of fantastic shinobi and samurai narratives of the past.
One key shepherd of this endeavor is Brooke Davies, the game's associate narrative director and, like many of Shadows' creative forces, a veteran of the Assassin's Creed Odyssey team. Screen Rant sat down with Brooke Davies at an Assassin's Creed Shadows preview event to discuss the game's complex cocktail of historical fact, emotional fiction, and giving the player some choices in the midst of that complicated world.
Figuring Out The Narrative Focus
Turning Life Into Fiction
Screen Rant: While Assassin's Creed games have always had some elements of familiar historical narratives, shinobi and samurai stories have such extensive precedent in facts and fiction compared to say, an Italian Renaissance assassin. How did that influence the narrative process, having so many other works to look at in that regard?
Brooke Davies: I think it was really great for the team to have so much material to look at when we were preparing to make the game. I think everybody connects with different inspiration in different ways, so there was a lot to choose from when we were doing research.
For me personally, something that I really connected with early on after ing the team was a historical work by a former samurai who went on to become a scribe and wrote about the history during the era the game is set in. His name was Ōta Gyūichi, and it was a chronicle of Lord Nobunaga. And the way that he — just his descriptions, I mean, he he was a samurai, so I think that perspective of somebody who had taken part in battles and, and seen difficult things, or I imagine that he had — was really interesting to me, became sort of a thread or a little lifeline that pulled me into the world. And that really ended up being something I came back to for inspiration.
Screen Rant: How do you select which figures of the era to include and emphasize? Obviously, Nobunaga will be there, it's a Sengoku period game, but as you get more into the nitty-gritty with more local figures and such?
Brooke Davies: There are many roads to our historical characters. As you say, there are some characters that you look at in a historical period and you think, oh, okay, this person is going to be interesting.
And then we also look at the story that we want to tell, and we look for opportunities in the recorded history to say, hmm, I wonder who, or in this area, or just sort of looking at the history, because sometimes life is stranger than fiction. I mean, we read about all of these very interesting people and their lives, and then as the story takes shape, you think, ah, okay, I could use somebody with that profile, or this person has something very relevant, or a tie, or a connection to something that we want to work on.
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Screen Rant: Are there any situations where you don't have information about a particular character or concept or something, like there's very little there? Is that ever a relief to be able to experiment more freely in that regard, or is it always just frustrating to wish you knew more?
Brooke Davies: Oh, that's a really interesting question.
For me personally, I think that I kind of look at the historical figures as people and take them as they are. Like I said, life can be stranger than fiction, so it usually feels like a great opportunity to sort of take these characters from words on the pages of history and elevate that to a lived experience.
And it's also very interesting to work within the confines of another person's life when writing. But on the flip side, even with our fictional characters, like Naoe, you know, we are all very much a product of our environments. So even when writing for fictional characters, we are looking at how they connect to the setting.
Naoe, as a shinobi, is from Iga, the birthplace of shinobi, and her father — we imagined her as the fictional daughter of a legendary shinobi who was a real historical figure. So the intention is to make all characters, historical or not, feel grounded, like they're a real part of the world.
Balancing Player Choice With Canon & History
Options That Don't Break The Story
Screen Rant: How does the canon mode work in this game, that I believe kind of steers certain branching options? Is that extensive across the board? It takes one path, and you just follow that if you're playing like that?
Brooke Davies: Yeah, correct. It will just play — so the canon mode I believe you can select in the game option settings. And when it's on, the game will unfold as if you had made those choices, but you won't see them.
Screen Rant: Was there always an internal idea of what the "canon" was? Or was that something that became, well, what, what's the most compelling path? And that will be the canon mode later on.
Brooke Davies: Yeah, it was interesting to look back when the story had been written. And sort of to be able to reflect on how everything had come together, and where we ended up, and understand what the best canon path would be. It's a lot of fun, actually.
Screen Rant: How do you balance player choice in these big narrative moments with historical synchronization? Making sure it doesn't branch too far from certain actual touchstones and the cultural authenticity of it. Like how Naoe’s background would influence, maybe she could have a couple ways in which to behave, but she still has to be someone who makes sense in that setting.
Brooke Davies: We usually want our choices to align with the character's motivations. So it's important that they make sense from a character and narrative perspective. Yeah.
Wrangling A Complex Setting For Assassin's Creed Shadows
The Sengoku Period Is Nothing To Sneeze At
Screen Rant: Were there any particular challenges in representing a setting as complex as the Sengoku period? Anything in particular that became very difficult to work with or to represent in a way that felt authentic but communicable to the player?
Brooke Davies: We were really fortunate during the production process to be able to work with a team of consultants and historians and experts who helped us on everything from research before we started working on the project to — and then as I was mentioning, sometimes you see little opportunities in history — and then sometimes we would then go back and say, oh, can I get a bit more information on this, or is this credible or plausible in this context?
And then on the narrative team, we worked also with a consultant after the scripts were written to look at topics like language and culture and to make sure that everything in the scripts was grounded well in the setting.
Screen Rant: Were there any elements in crafting the story and researching the narrative that revealed themselves as, oh, typically stories of this nature don't really represent this well, and this is something we can do here? Is there anything that stood out in that regard?
Brooke Davies: Like, in of opportunities? Well, the historical period that the game is set in was such an interesting period of contrast and complexity on the political front. So I really liked the name for this period, that it's a warring states period. It was super evocative to me of what this context is, what's going on.
And then to be able to have our two protagonists to really examine those complexities in the era and even like, figures from the era, like Oda Nobunaga, to have different perspectives on such a great historical figure was really fun.
Screen Rant: The politics of the period were often intertwined with a lot of religious influence and context. Is that something the game touches on much?
Brooke Davies: I'm trying to think of examples. We do see, there are some instances in this historical period, of course, of warrior monks, for example. And we do… I mean, the religious context of the period, it's such an integral part of that time period that we did want to incorporate elements of that into the game in as respectful a way as possible.
Screen Rant: Was there much in the way of historical sources on espionage practices at the time to draw on for this?
Brooke Davies: Resources on espionage practices at the time? Oh my goodness, yes. We had a wealth of research from our /consultants and historians and experts that we were able to look at when we were constructing the game's narrative and characters, yeah.
Emotional Storytelling & Conveying Big Themes
Pathos Is The Name Of The Game
Screen Rant: The gameplay sessions revealed some big emotional moments in the game. Are both Yasuke and Naoe's stories aiming to have that level of pathos and that level of emotional heights?
Brooke Davies: Well, without going into spoiler territory about what's to come, I think it's definitely — I mean, there are some big themes in our game. It's a time period of, at this point, there's been hundreds of years of civil war in Japan. It's a very difficult context for the people who are living through this period. And we see a lot of examples of that in-game.
For example, we have a character, Tomiko — and I think you saw her briefly in the prologue — and she helps Naoe in a difficult moment. And she's a fictional character, but she's somebody who has lost everything she has because of the wars that are ongoing in Japan.
And we see her, in spite of that, start over after this loss and help Naoe and Yasuke, to help herself, start over and rebuild. And the hideout, actually, that you'll play in-game, it starts out as Tomiko's Homestead, a place that she offers to them. So there’s an arc there.
Screen Rant: In Assassin's Creed 2, a very different game, there's a moment where Ezio meets his uncle for the first time in the context of the game. And his uncle says, "It's a me, Mario," and it's kind of just a riff on Super Mario Bros. Is that kind of humor something that is still present, or is there more of a focus on the immersion to the world of the game specifically, if that makes sense?
Brooke Davies: Well, I think in this story, we do have a range of emotions. We do have a spectrum of emotions. So, we do have lighter moments, and I think you saw an example of this in the Noble Quest line. We have Tokubei, the commander who's lost his pants. So there are these moments of levity that come in to balance out some of the bigger themes.
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Screen Rant: What kind of response to the story of Assassin's Creed Shadows would make you feel like the team really achieved what it set out to do with the narrative?
Brooke Davies: Oh, that's an interesting question. I would say one of the core narrative themes of the game is community. And chosen family is another.
And I think for players to feel that, through their time with Naoe and Yasuke, that they kind of belong to the league, or the league belongs to them, that they have a personal connection with these people who have come together to try to make their world a brighter place, would be really something. To feel a part of that family.
Screen Rant: The hideout, also in this game, is that something that opened up many opportunities in of letting players spend more time with Yasuke and Naoe and see how they interacted in maybe an environment that wasn't always — I mean, like you said, there's a range of emotions — but as driven and potentially stressful as the main story of the game? Where it's more of a downtime experience?
Brooke Davies: We had so much fun writing for the hideout and imagining these extra chapters in the stories of the relationships of the allies and people that we meet in the game and all of these friendships that we have. And also in imagining relationships between the different allies as they kind of start to spend time together in the hideout and get to know each other.
So narratively, that was a very fun exercise.
